Dubious reform path

A proposal to take the selection of Ethics Commission members away from Mayor Jerry Sanders and the City Council has become entangled in a legal thicket that could hamper the ethics panel for a protracted period.

Last week City Council members Carl DeMaio, Donna Frye and Sherri Lightner blocked the confirmation of three highly respected ethics commissioners nominated by Sanders. A fourth opening also exits on the seven-member commission.

Although the rejected commissioners will continue to serve (as volunteers, without pay) until replacements are confirmed by the City Council, the panel is now operating under clouded circumstances. Worse, it seems likely that this troubling situation will continue indefinitely.

DeMaio and Frye want to hand over the selection of Ethics Commission members to a panel of three retired judges. “City elected officials should not be confirming their own Ethics Commissioners,” DeMaio declared in a press release. Only problem is, the DeMaio-Frye proposal appears to violate the city charter, which stipulates that the mayor and City Council have the sole authority to appoint and confirm “members of City boards, commissions, and committees...” Consequently, the DeMaio-Frye plan as it currently stands would still require a confirmation vote by the City Council for ethics commissioners nominated by judges – the very situation that DeMaio decries.

This means that, under the DeMaio-Frye proposal, the City Council still would be able to do what it did last week – scuttle the nominations of exemplary Ethics Commission appointees. How would this be reform?

The City Attorney's Office has offered a preliminary judgment that the city charter precludes the City Council from delegating its confirmation responsibility to an outside selection panel. City Attorney Jan Goldsmith is conducting a more thorough legal review, however, and will issue a definitive memorandum of law on the question within a few weeks.

If in the final analysis it is determined that the city charter requires confirmation of ethics commissioners by the City Council, the DeMaio-Frye plan would make no sense. In that event, the only way to create a truly independent selection process would be to go to the voters and seek approval for a charter amendment. The soonest that could occur is next June, the next scheduled election.

In the meantime, the Ethics Commission is being held hostage to the DeMaio-Frye agenda, operating with only three of its seven members confirmed in their current terms. What a dubious way to carry out reform.